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| Africa North |
| Algeria's loss-making state companies to be broken up, sold |
| 2007-10-02 |
| Algeria's loss-making state-owned companies will be broken up while others will be privatised alongside the country's banks, Prime Minister Abdelaziz Belkhadem said. "As regards unprofitable companies, the government will no longer keep them alive and instead will seek to break them up," the premier told a meeting of Algerian businessmen late Sunday. The government has repeatedly said it will privatise state-owned entreprises it can no longer afford to support, excluding only those deemed to be of strategic importance to the country, such as the oil and gas major Sonatrach or the railways. Some 500 of 1,000 state-owned companies had been privatised up to last year, according to government figures, and in September another 13 were put up for sale. Belkhadem also said reform of Algeria's banking system was imperative. "We will offer up to 30 percent of the capital" of the state-owned development bank, he said, noting the already announced sale of 51 percent of Credit Populaire d'Algerie, a savings bank which has attracted interest from major US, French and Spanish groups. Belkhadem warned that foreign banks were already operating in Algeria and with more to come, their local counterparts will have to face up to very severe competition or perish as a result. |
| Posted by:Fred |